Revision as of 01:14, 18 June 2012

While in robot lab have focused on the simulation side of the subject. Simulators can be sepereted into two groups based on their software licence. Currently the most developed open source simulator is player/stage/gazebo. They are the most widely used robotics simulation software available. There are a few open source simulators available on modern computing platforms but none of them approach the amount of users of player/stage/gazebo.

Contents

Summary of work

I spent the first three or four weeks trying to install player, stage, and gazebo as well as looking at some of the other options available to students for simulation of robotics. Once I installed and learned to use ROS i found that it was not necessary to install player, stage, and gazebo if your going to use ros because ros will do the work for you. After I had gazebo working with ros i spent two weeks working on learning urdf to make a simulated robot and then learning xacro to make it easier to alter and add to that simulated robot. After that I spent a week trying to learn how to control a robot in gazebo through ros but my efforts did not find any results so i began learning how to do so through player. As a result of that I learned how to define a world in stage. My last task was to learn to use player to control robots.

Player, stage, gazebo

Installing Player/stage/gazebo standalone

player

If you are going to use stage or gazebo you must first install player. Player is essentially software which allows your computer to communicate with your robot, interoperate its sensor output, and give it commands to move. When used with stage or gazebo it allows you to